


Courses Not Available in the Catalog

by Querulousgawks



Series: Tumblr Prompts [13]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not!Fic, Pre-Friendship, Sick Character, passing mentions of - Freeform, shitty knight - Freeform, very slight suggestions of future romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9690284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: Lardo got bronchitis, her freshman year, back when she was still Larissa and the hockey team was just a job.(Not!fic, slightly cleaned up from tumblr, from the prompt:characters learning how to be cared about)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garden of succulents (staranise)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/gifts).



She takes the job with Samwell Men's Hockey because she’s been managing people with minimal reward her whole life. (Picture laconic high school theater props manager Larissa Duan. You’re welcome.) And now that someone’s willing to pay her for it? She’s in.

At first she takes the same approach she took to actors and group projects: do your shit while keeping an eye on their shit, expect nothing and be prepared for assholes. And that first semester…well, the goalie is super courteous but otherwise her expectations are borne out. It’s fine! It pays better than the library, and watching teen boys in awkward layers of padding wobble their way onto the ice makes her feel good about her clothes _and_ her life choices, by comparison. She hears a terrible rumour before applying for the job, and deals with it by stating flatly in the interview that she’d be happy to organize gear, but she wasn’t doing anyone’s laundry. (There’s a rush of relief and respect when Murray says bemusedly: “Yeah, that’s - we’re not hiring you to parent them.” It makes her fonder of him than she has been of any previous boss.) 

Anyway, the point is that Larissa's fine with just doing the job and keeping her distance. She has Cool Aloof Art Friends now - she’s pretty sure they’re friends - so does she need these big loud jocks to see her as a person? No. She does not. 

But.

Coming back from winter break Larissa gets bronchitis, a hacking cough that’s set off like clockwork by cold air. She has to miss a couple practices, and when, subsequently, one specific not-loud but extra-uptight player shows up at her dorm room she is like, OH NO, I AM ENTITLED TO SICK TIME BUDDY DON’T YOU EVEN.

In her head, where the capital letters live. She doesn’t say anything out loud.

“I have - euh - I made soup,” Jack says, into a silence as chilly as a morning at Faber. It is Bad Bob Zimmermann soup but Jack doesn’t think he should say this. Would their Laconic Equip Manager, who the hockey team spent all first semester distantly, fearfully adoring, and who is now staring at him in blank exhaustion, care whose recipe it was? She would not, Jack decides, and so he just holds it out, an offering. Except - she is squinching up her face? Does she not like soup??

Lardo is trying not to cry. 

Lardo fails in this endeavor. 

(Don’t judge bronchitis is _rough_ and sometimes you get pleurisy which fucking hurts, every time you breathe. Lardo’s probably on the edge of it. She keeps thinking it’s going to get better and it _swoops back down,_ and none of her art friends have been by, and maybe that means she shouldn’t even DO art? Does she want a career where people abandon you at the first sign of contagious disease? Except it’s only been three months and she’s hard to get to know, right, people always say that, and anyway what else is she going to do, babysit big loud jocks her whole life??)

Yes, she knows she’s losing it. Her lungs feel like sandpaper and -

And meanwhile here’s this big damn not-loud sad-eyed jock standing here with soup, because Samwell is so _fucking weird._

So yeah, she loses the squinch battle and starts to cry and drops some non-sequitur like, “sorry, my chest hurts -”

Just as Jack stutters through something like, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have - you just do so much for us and we’re not - I know we don’t- you deserve, euh, soup.”

Whereupon Laconic Chill Manager of Other’s Lives Larissa Duan -

-just full-on _collapses -_

-into Famously Aloof Coke Addict Jack Zimmermann’s arms. 

Like, no one’s ever buried their face in Jack’s shirt quite like this.*

He puts the soup-free hand lightly on her back, only a little awkward, and wow, Jack is not really her type at all but his hand _spans her ribcage_ and is so warm, it’s like a perfectly shaped heating pad for her aching lungs, so she’s just - gonna stand here for a little while. A long little while. 

It’s not like Jack’s going anywhere. Number of people Jack Zimmerman has successfully provided comfort to, since his overdose: very few, most of them pee-wee hockey players. Off the ice, when was the last time a grown person felt better because of something Jack did? It’s the kind of thought that makes him pull her closer, indifferent to the way his shirt is getting soaked.

So -yeah. They just sort of cling to each other, for a little long while. 

And eventually Larissa’s breathing evens out a little and Jack says, “I should warm this up, ehhh?” mostly to make her laugh, and she _does_.

(Jack is excessively pleased by this because he’s a big _dork._ )

So Larissa crawls into her upright-on-the-bed-for-bronchitis-reasons blanket nest, and Jack microwaves the soup and brings it to her in a mug that’s meant to look like Wellie the Dancing Well. (“Shitty,” he says in explanation, and she nods.) And then Jack sits, only a little awkwardly, on the end of the bed.

She’s about halfway through the cup when he says quietly, “almost half the team wanted to come. Ok? I - um. Didn’t want to overwhelm you, but they wanted to come.” She takes a gulp of soup, to keep from crying again, and tucks her toes under Jack’s thigh in gratitude when he pretends not to notice.

Then he adds thoughtfully, “I think Ransom and Holster might still be sitting on Shitty to hold him down,” and she _cracks up._ It hurts but it’s worth it, thinking of Shitty and his dumb bristly mustache, pinned under Ransom and Holster as they - ignore his rant about violence over reason, probably. 

In the end she has to hand Jack the mug, so she can laugh as hard as that image deserves without spilling any of the soup.

It’s damn good soup, after all, and her friend made it for her. She’s not letting it go to waste.


End file.
